Today I am short on words. I have been spending them in other places this week, but I want to take a moment and bring up a problem that I don’t know how to solve. It is something I have talked about before, approached from different angles, and honestly at times I feel like a lone voice in the wilderness trying to call attention to something that in my mind is the most important challenge of our time.
The problem is simple: How do we create unity and understanding in a nation whose leaders hold power by setting subgroups of the citizenry against each other?
I often talk about how we should see others as people not as the flags they wave and the causes they support. Today I feel that may be too ambitious. Today I just want us to recognize that we are all Americans and we will get out of these hard times in better shape if we help each other despite what our leadership says.
Gays, Straights, Christians, Muslims, Poor, Middle Class, hell, even the Rich, this is our country. We are not each other’s enemies. Right now these labels are weapons in the politicians’ hands. We need to disarm them and see past the labels and see our neighbors as only that - neighbors, fellow Americans working hard to get by.
Can we do that? Will you help me?
Not sure I would say “solved” as actively worked against I as an individual choose not to judge others and to work with compassion to all. I choose to encourage others by example to do the same. No real way to enforce save social contract and not a solution but maybe a start?
And i think that is what we need to do, and need to encourage more people to do.